The Andrew Lee

The following parody video about BP’s oil spill has 5,000,000+ (and counting) views on YouTube.

By contrast, the President’s video address on the spill got about 90,000 views on Youtube.  And a video from BP’s CEO apologizing and explaining some of the things they are doing to address the spill got about 400,000 views.

As someone who creates media that tries to get people to act and think about issues and public policy, I found this a bit disheartening.  The most popular media on the BP spill has nothing to do with understanding the causes of or proposing solutions to the crisis.  If you can only get people to view media that appeals to the inner reptile in us — the loathing — how are you supposed to influence people to take positive action?  It’s one thing to get angry and stomp around about BP the big bad oil company.  It’s a whole other thing to understand how the everyday choices of Americans regarding energy consumption created the circumstances for a spill like this to happen.

In 2008, Annie Leonard created a video called the Story of Stuff about environmental degradation.  I loved her video because it educated viewers and called on them to positive action.  I’d love to see her take a crack at a video about the BP oil spill.  She has a great talent for making us realize how our individual choices lead to consequences in the environment around us.

Check out the following video by Greenpeace UK that advocates against Nestle’s buying of palm oil from companies that cause rain forest destruction.

What is your first reaction? Do you like Kit Kat? Would you keep eating it? Now, do you remember what is being threatened in the video?

If you are an average viewer, I think your primal reaction is that it’s gross, and you’ll think twice about buying any Kit Kat bars. Why? Remember the woman who found a human finger in her soda can…

Ok, so you don’t buy Kit Kats. But does the video give you any reason to care about Orangutans that are threatened or about rain forest destruction? I don’t think so. That, to me, is the basic problem with the message of this video. You might as well just videotape someone defecating on a Kit Kat bar — I think you will get the same reaction from the average viewer.

Of course, that is my opinion. It would be fascinating to actually get a focus group with a broad cross-section of people, and see what reactions to the video actually are. Notably, some who posted on the Youtube channel for Greenpeace UK had similar reactions that I had:

edenane: It’s over the top videos like this which give Greenpeace and such a bad name, I don’t think you need a video with such grotesque imagery to get your point across. It’s good that Nestlé stopped buying the palm oil though.
I also doubt that the people Nestlé bought the palm oil from are the worst offenders for deforestation too.

Now, the video probably pleases the hard-core activist. And, importantly, as a result of the video and the Facebook campaign that followed, Nestle did agree to stop buying the offending palm oil. If that was the goal, great. But I doubt you’ve convinced many more people to care about the many ways companies are damaging rain forest habitat, and for those turned off by the video, you may have lost supporters.

Another piece that I edited for In The Life, about the influence of the religious right on anti-homsexuality laws in Uganda.

Below is a video piece I edited for IN THE LIFE’s June 2010 show. The video is entitled “Democracy or Theocracy?” and asks important questions about the Government’s role in funding religious organizations. In addition to editing the piece, I worked with the Producer on story scripting the content and interviews.

Here is a trailer for the film THE CARTEL by Bob Bowdon, which is about the corruption and malfeasance in the New Jersey school system.

What makes this film such a powerful piece of advocacy is just the obscenity of the facts. In Newark alone, 400 non-teacher administrators drawing $100,000 salaries per year. High school graduates unable to read English. Janitors making 6 figures and working hundreds of hours of overtime. Massive theft of equipment. Classrooms that spend $300,000+, with less than 10% going to actual teaching.

Everyone agrees that those facts show corruption. The more delicate task for persuasion is to wrap a larger story around those facts, a larger story that may or may not be directly dependent on the facts. For example, if you can say something broader about education reform in ALL districts, not just ones with outright corruption, by marshaling the facts from particularly corrupt districts, you have leveraged just the facts into something more.